Hide Article Text (OCR)
Those Smile Buttons'■'-i ■' j-fv * ' -- • ' ‘ '“I- V-' : 'V.U/ *v ‘ 'lt; T - ® I“v ' £jfg •-? -c• ^ ■ |v ii*--. —sjfe ^ - l! Ui r.°i v. -j ,)-• aid- 'mi. i iti ^jyn i»ii i**V v •Are Here To Stay. *’ ■• •' ■ V*-; 4 *:3- /**• {£'i® *'*•’a*V’.'Jf• ~ ~ . X ♦By JOSEPH M. TREEN Prom NewsdayNEW YORK — Lot’s get one thing straightright now: I hate smile buttons. Not hat* really — they're not worth hating — but have an opinion, let’s say, which does nottan heavily in their favor.I’m not the only one. I met a man the other day who said he couldn’t stand them, either. He was bordering on hysteria.* 11-I^SIr mSm • *’* to, ' WS * $“Everywhere I look, there they are smilingat me, grinning, constantly grinning, looking at me with that idiotic face. I’m sick of them; I can’t stand them. I’d like, to get.* rid of them. All of them. They’re everywhere.”He’s right. They are everywhere.Everywhere. _They are on buttons. You’ve seen the buttons. Smile buttons. They are on coffee can lids, eookies, pencils and pens, napkins, even brassiers. I went to the wallpaper store theother day. Smile wallpaper. I was in a lampstore. Smile Lamps. I went into the children’sdepartment of Macy’s and came out absolutely giggly: smile postcards, smileglasses, smile clocks, smile purses, smile key chains, smile baby shoes, smile earrings, smile, smile, smile, smile.Absolutely everywhere,• .The Westbury, L.I., Chamber of Commerce uses a smile as its symbol. That means there’s a smile on almost every door indowntown Westbury. * Downtown Westbury — that’s something to smile about.No one really knows who started the smile, but whoever it was probably has incredible problems dealing with guilt. Amazing as it may seem, there are some who actually want to be known as the inventor of the smile button. Kool-Aid says it created it; Hertz Rent-A-Car says it created it; WMCA Radio says it created it; a California group called “No War Toys” says it created it, and Junior Achievement says one of its student companies created it, but doesn’t know which one. Then there is the view that the whole thing started when a little known 19th century cchoolteacher put the first sunny face on the first spelling homework that deserved it. And finally, there was the opinion expressed by the man who tried to copyright the smile face but got turned down. “Who caresanyway?” he said.One of Nassau’s leading Republicans, County Controller Angelo RoncaUo, has wona smile button for seven months. Just theother day someone gave him a box of smilebuttons that bear a striking resemblance to none other than Angelo Roncallo. That madehim imilt. He handed them out to a lotof other Republicans, but he says that even though Hubert Humphrey has a happintpi-ia-Hubert smile button and George McGovern has a McGovem-for-preiident smile button, it doesn’t mean that the Roncallo smile button Is a Roncallo for Congress smile button. “That would be a little premature, he said just days before announcing he was running for Congress. He just likes smile buttons.Why? “I don’t know, RoncaUo said. “It’s kind of a .'. . well, it’s • conversation piece. People comment on it. They look at it and they say, ‘amile,’ or ’it's a great day,' or ‘where’d you get the smile button? It’s a great way to get to know people. Besides,Ronmlla lays, smile buttons carry a message.“It shows that things aren't always ss badB« they seem, he laid. “Every cloud has A aiUwwr lining. *vEvery cloud l« prbably wearing a amile buttoniidfiP i\.wp6BSmile buttons art everywhere. There’s even a frown button with an unprintable word onit. That made me smile.You want to know how popular smile buttons are? One smile-button manufacturer, Robert Slater of N. G Slater Corp., of Manhattan estimates thet they have sold IS to 20 million of them. And the orders arc still coming in. Another manufacturer says you can't evenget out of the country to evoid smile buttons.Villey Stream’s Larry Fox Associates says most orders right now are from Europe and Japan. “Funny, we got orders from Leabnon and Israel in the same week — maybe that’s• good sign. 4 * • •There’s even a smile joke book caUed “Smiles, Chuckles and Chortles. It has drawings of a yeUow smile face all through it and great jokes Try this one;,“Why dioa’t you like girls?“They’re too biased.”“Biased?”“Yes, bias this and bias that — until I'mbankrupt.”- illft_ A/ki :ji'The book can really make you smile. Slatersays that if you take all the smile buttons, books, coffee can covers, pens, pencils, sweatshirts, bra* — everything with a smile face on it— it would add up to $75 million in business. His company alone, he says, has sold smile buttons to morp than 1,000 different businesses, all with their brand name or slogan on them. Thu* far, good humor ice cream has purchased 100.000 what-the-world-needs-now-is-more-good-humor smile buttons and City Financial Systems are ordered more than 1,000,000 CIT-financial-services amile buttons. Clairol has its try-a-little-kindness smile buttons and Woolworth’s has shop-Woolworth,-may-I-help-you? smile buttons. There’s even a “kill ’em with kindness” smile flyswatter.Why why why why why?Why has the smile face gone beyond the fad, beyond the simple craze? Why is it what the military call entrenched, whit businessmen call “institutionalized,” what bureaucrats call ongoing? Why are smile faces traditional when they are only 18 months old? , ;\a .Piyehiatrist*, Robert Damino and Arthur Young agree on two theories. The first is that smile buttons are a reacting against all the gloom in the world. Damino said he watched an hour-long news program and counted 28 news items involving death, robbery, mugging, war, violence or carnage. “So I think these smiles may be a counterreaction,” he laid.The other theory is that in these days ofautomation, person-to-person contact has dropped off; people watch televiaion and don’t talk to each othar; people buy food fromvending machines and not from people; they get their cars washed by machines and not by living car washers. Impersonal. So, the two psychiatrists believe, the smile button la a way of saying “Hi.”Button-maker Slater has hia own view. Commercialization. “The market was ready for a new merchandizing concept and, at the same time, things were so dismal. There was unemployment. There was an unpopular war. Things were the worst that things had been.” That was p year and a half ago. “The amile was the antithesis of what had been happening and it mushroomed into a phenomenal fad. And fads mean talcs and sale* mean money. “Goodnea* became commercialised,” Slaterlaid. “Anything can be commercialized. Imean, this yaar we re seeing the commercialization of Jeaua Christ and God. We ju*tgot an order: ‘8mile, God Loves you.’ For us, it’s the beginning of a whole retail con-Wpt V’ »■ , -)» , . * jflftj.'-i.J • £ . t • .-lt;• • * # jfc.The othar thing Slater say*, which almost depressed me enough to go out and buy a smile button, was that smile buttons are here to stay. Far be it for the smila button to be a norma! hula-hoop fad and simply go away after a few spins. No, the smile button Is only the beginning. “It established a market,” Slater says, “for a large number of buttons: The Raggedy Ann button, the *try it — you’ll like it’ button. We got a whole line of happy or cute buttons; T can’t believe I ate the whole thing.’ And we got freaky fruits: . cute little humanistic mushrooms on a button. Cute clever ideas like that St®Which didn't make me smile at all.
Newspaper Details
Sarasota Herald Tribune
Sarasota, Florida, US
Wed, Apr 12, 1972
Page 32
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
LA, USA 03 Oct 2022
Other Publications Near Sarasota, Florida
Sarasota Herald Daily Tribune
Sarasota Herald Sunday Tribune
Sarasota Herald
Sarasota Journal
Sarasota News
